


Rooftops

by biswholocked



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 17:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1193403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biswholocked/pseuds/biswholocked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-Reichenbach. John wakes up from a nightmare only to remember his best friend is gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rooftops

**Author's Note:**

> My first Sherlock fic. un-beta-ed and un-britpicked, so apologies for any inconsistencies/mistakes.

John sat up in bed, heart pounding and breath ragged, sweaty from his nightmare. He moved to turn on the light next to the bed when it hit him all over again, that the nightmare was real. Sherlock’s death. Watching him jump. His funeral. It was an endless film playing on the back of John’s eyelids, and as he relived it for the thousandth time he experienced the same inability to breathe as he had when it had happened. As he struggled for air the tears began to form in his eyes. He finally caught a breath, releasing it in a sob and there was no stopping it then. The pain felt like a knife going through his chest, and sometimes he wondered if it would kill him.  
After a while, he wasn’t sure how long, the sobs stopped, though tears still made their way slowly down his face. “Dammit Sherlock,” he whispered softly, voice hoarse. “Why? Why did you leave me here alone?” He shakily got out of bed and threw on some trousers and a shirt before walking to the window, looking out on the empty street below, the streetlights casting a dim, dreamlike look over the scene. John leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. He couldn’t hear a sound but his head was so so loud, the phone call playing over and over, Sherlock’s last words, the sound his body made as it hit the pavement below. “Dammit,” he said again and pressed his forehead against the chilly windowpane. He stood there for a moment, then slid open the window. He shimmied out of it and reached out to the fire escape, pulling himself up over the railing. Looking down to make sure he didn’t miss a step, he climbed up the building to the roof.  
It was cold; John’s breath clouded out before him, and he found himself wanting a sweater or coat as he stood at the edge of the roof. Things looked a lot different up here, he thought. Was this how Sherlock felt, terrified and sad and liberated all at once? He drew an unsteady breath and wiped at the tears that had started again, before sitting down, letting his legs dangle down. The sobs and knife-in-chest feeling came back, and John shook his head.  
“Why? Why did you leave me, and why won’t you come back?” he choked out. “Sherlock, please, please just come back. I can’t do this without you…” he trailed off, putting his head in his hands and squeezing his eyes shut tight, unable to get those images out of his head.“Please don’t be dead.”  
And he sat there, cold, in the dark, and alone, with the sadness of Sherlock’s death in his heart and his friend’s ghost sitting beside him.


End file.
